What is the Shortage Occupation List for Tier 2 Skilled Migrants?

UK Shortage Occupation List

The Government uses the United Kingdom Shortage Occupation List to decide who can get Tier 2 Visas to come and work in the UK.

There is a separate Shortage Occupation List for Scotland.

The Shortage Occupation List is “a list of available jobs that the local labour market fails to fill. These are the positions that are open across industries in the entire United Kingdom. These roles are available to all foreign nationals, regardless if they’re from a European Union (EU)-member country or not”.

Migration Advisory Committee

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAP) decide which jobs go on it. They update it annually.

If a company has a vacancy which it cannot fill in he UK then it can hire someone from anywhere in the world to fill that vacancy.

That’s provided the skill is in on the UK Shortage Occupation List.

There are currently more than 30 jobs on it.

Skilled Migrant Workers

Any migrant worker from outside the EU can come and work in the UK – provided they have a salary of at least £159,000 a year.

As you can imagine, this would exclude most skilled migrants.

If they are not able to earn that salary then they would have to apply to get a Tier 2 visa.

Also, the skills that a UK company seeks must be on the UK Shortage Occupation List.

They issue 20,700 of these Tier 2 Visas every year. That is the current limit.

Doctors and Nurses Exempted

Doctors, nurses, IT workers and engineers are the main employment categories to get Tier 2 visas.

However, because of a shortage of 30,000 nurses and 10,000 doctors in the NHS, these occupations are not now under restriction by that number.

As they issued around 8,000 visas for those professions this means that more companies can apply for visas for non-EU workers through this route.

Tier 2 Visas for IT Workers and Engineers

The main ‘beneficiaries’ of the extra visas available will be in IT and engineering.